Contract signed to repair Port Arthur levee

By Tim Collins

Published 12:53 pm, Wednesday, August 9, 2017

A contract was signed Wednesday morning to begin repairs on the 250-foot section of Port Arthur's levee wall that was found damaged, Phil Kelley, general manager of Jefferson County Drainage District Number 7, said.

Kelley said the engineers and contractors plan to reinforce the levee wall from the water-side with loose river sand and super-sized sandbags, most likely covered with heavy stone to stabilize the wall. To protect the 250-foot damaged section, a rigged steel wall with a cap will be driven into the ground behind it.

Kelley said the damaged levee wall was inspected about a month before the damage was found on July 30. The damage was first noticed by a local fisherman fishing in the gulf, who then posted about it on social media. The damage was then assessed and reported to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, who originally began construction on the Hurrican Flood Protection System in 1962 as a joint venture with Drainage District 7 and handed to the district in 1980.

Judge Jeff Branick said in case the repair efforts run overbudget, he has a Disaster Declaration un Chapter 418 of the Texas government code "typed and sitting on (his) desk" that he could then bring to Gov. Abbott to request additional funding.

Col. Lars Zetterstrom, district engineer and commanding officer of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District, said a feasability study, the Sabine Pass to Galveston Bay Feasability Report, was begun by the corps in 2012 to determine the feasability of updating the 40-year-old levee system. Col. Zetterstrom said the report will be completed this year and forwarded to Congress for possible authorization in a 2018 Water Resources Development Act. The act would provide funding to permanently update the Port Arthur and Vicinity Hurricane Flood Protection System.

"We already were conducting engineering and analysis to propose a solution to make this system much more resilient and to account for relative sea level changes in the future," Zetterstrom said.

Zetterstrom said some "super-sized sandbags" from the corps are being used to shore up the levee as a temporary measure, but that the corps has requested a restocking of sandbags in case of a coastal storm.

Branick said Jefferson County is ready for the approach of a tropical storm, such as Tropical Storm Franklin that recently touched down on the Yucatan Peninsula.

"We want to let everyone know that this isn't the time to panic," Branick said. "I have no doubt that the levee will be made safe. In the event that we were to be faced by a tropical storm formation, emergency measures will be implemented to assure the wall is reinforced prior to that. National Guard troops will be brought in to provide labor to be sure of that. I think we can feel safe that under any set of circumstances that we will be able to respond to the current situation."